


To stay here, on higher ground

by Skylark



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Skylark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greek mythology AU. He's always been an artist; she's always been his equal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To stay here, on higher ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JXValentine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JXValentine/gifts).



> Written for Pokeprompts' yearly holiday fic exchange. Fic title is from “I Look to You” by Miami Horror (ft. Kimbra), which you shouldn't listen to when reading this. :x Thanks to [](http://kuruk.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**kuruk**](http://kuruk.dreamwidth.org/) for betaing, and to [](http://keltena.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**keltena**](http://keltena.dreamwidth.org/) and [](http://axolotl.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://axolotl.dreamwidth.org/)**axolotl** for assistance with the ending.

Everything he creates is cold.

 _The master craftsman,_ they praise him. _He shapes stone into fabric and movement, into emotion itself._ But he runs his fingers over his sculptures and only feels marble beneath his fingers.

 _His work is perfect,_ they say. _He's been gifted by the gods._ But he stares into a statue's eyes and only sees a mask of stone.

It's not enough.

\--

She starts as stillness, unmoved by wind and weather and the pressures of time, only mutable by human minds and human hands.

She starts as pure potential.

\--

Cyprus is a land of traders, known for their skill with pottery and metal. Even in a country of craftsmen, he is a stranger—an eccentric outcast who lives on the knife-edge of civilization, admired and isolated. His works sell for unfathomable amounts and grace the palaces of the wealthy and most powerful, but he lives in a stark cottage overlooking the ocean. His only companions are the animals of the wilderness and the silent, half-hewn figures in his workshop. He works from sunset to sunrise and sleeps with the day.

One night finds him pacing the length of Aphrodite's cool temple floors, hands never still: steepling before his frowning mouth, tapping blueprints against the skin of his upper arms, and running restless through the bird's nest of his hair, where only wild thoughts come to roost. He stops and whirls to face the grand statue in the temple's heart, his own creation. Every statue here is from his hand.

 _I'll carve perfection,_ he announces. _A creature so beautiful that anyone who sees her will fall in love._

Fading echoes are his only answer, but the goddess of love is listening. He knows she is. He's made enough offerings to the Olympic pantheon to allow him a little hubris, he thinks.

\--

He rejects dozens of possible stones before he finds her: a massive piece of recrystallized carbonate, white as Selene, free of the discolorations he's found in other blocks this size.

He rests his palms flat against the marble. The stone warms beneath his fingers.

\--

He sketches and practices for months before he takes a chisel and hammer to her pitted surface. He works carefully and with precision, in stops and starts, pausing for thought before proceeding with a quick and self-assured hand. The sound of metal on stone rattles against the walls of his cottage like hail.

The marble shifts into a shape of his choosing, slender bones overlaid with gentle curves. He loses himself in the details: a whorl of hair, the thin skin covering a closed eye, the curve of a thumbnail, each intercostal indentation. He polishes her surface until she shimmers like satin.

He calls for her in a language he knows better than his own tongue. Slowly, over many moonrises, she comes.

\--

Warmth spreads from her lips to her cheeks, coils down the swoop of her spine, spreads through her marrow to her fingertips. She yields to the pressure on her softening lips, her back arching over his encircling arms. Her eyes open and meet his, realizing at once who stands before her.

 _Oh, hubris,_ he breathes when the kiss is ended. His eyes are bright with delight—wonder—wry bemusement. His accent rolls like the ocean over the rocky shoreline below. _I've succeeded. The moment I set eyes on you, I fell in love._

\--

He dresses her in a swirling skirt of fine-spun cloth and saffron dye, and adorns her hair with ropes of tiny pearls. Then he brings her to Aprhodite's temple, where he promises the goddess a lifetime of devotion and service. She stands awkwardly behind him, surrounded by girls trapped in stone as she once was.

She was born from marble, and he treats her as such: not fragile, as some would a girl as lovely as she, but as an equal. She stays by his side, following him curiously throughout the cottage. Without pausing in his work, he explains his craft to her in every way he knows how—with words, and demonstrations, and hands that cradle her own as he teaches her how each hammer's strike adds up to a statue's whole.

She covers her gown with his oldest apron and dedicates herself to her apprenticeship, using her pearls to adorn the neck of her creator's latest statue and binding her hair into two long plaits instead. He laughs and doesn't fight her choices. Her hands grow callused, and her bright yellow skirt becomes tattered, covered in dust.

Together they create men and women, creatures of the earth and sky. He takes smaller commissions, and she delights in helping him carve them, then sending them under only his name. After a time, he stops taking commissions entirely, only interested in teaching her and capturing pieces of her likeness—her shoulder blades, her smile. Aphrodite's temple even sends an initiate to ask for his help, but he turns them away.

She's a priceless jewel set in a dull, cheap frame, and nothing about this ascetic life suits her. But her eyes are bright and happy as she chips away at sculptures of her own, and when she laughs, the whole room glows. With her beauty, she could choose anyone, anywhere, but she stays with him in his cottage overlooking the sea. He's blessed, so blessed, and he laughs with her despite the lingering tightness in his chest.

\--

He finds her standing on the cliff's edge, watching as Eos's rosy fingers spread across the sky. She's frowning. One of her braids has unraveled after the night's work, and wisps of it drift on the breeze.

He stops beside her, and she speaks. _How did you come to have all your skill?_

 _Everyone says it's a gift,_ he replies. _It's more than that. I love the work—I live for it._

 _So do I,_ she says, quietly frustrated.

He lifts her hands, admires the fine dust that coats them, the rough skin that gives way to the smoothness of her inner wrist. He wants to sculpt her again and again.

 _Skill also comes from experience,_ he says. _You've never seen anything but Cyprus._

After a pause, she looks at him. Her eyes are frightened, hopeful.

_Would you come?_

He hesitates, thinking of everything he calls home—and then looks at her, and says, _Yes._

\--

Months later, the sea engulfs their ship off the coast of Mykonos. Aphrodite, ocean's daughter, has come to reclaim what is hers.

They sink like stones. The last thing he knows is the clutch of her fingers, the last kiss he gives her to fill her lungs with air, her wide eyes on his.

\--

...

..

.

 **< VulpesMirabilis>** Lanette! I've been looking for you  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** I think I've found the problem with rearranging pokémon in the box  
 **< StringOfPerls>** Hello, Bill!  
 **< StringOfPerls>** Oh! I was looking at that last night before I went to sleep.  
 **< StringOfPerls>** Let me guess....the schema problem? I just finished fixing it, actually. Take a look!  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** you beat me to it? I owe you one!  
 **< StringOfPerls>** I wanted to talk to you, too! I had an idea I wanted to run past you.  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** I wish you weren't so far, it'd be so much easier for us to work together if you were close by  
 **< StringOfPerls>** I'd love to meet you in person one day. :)  
 **< StringOfPerls>** Anyway, I was also working on the transportation system of newly-caught pokémon into the PC.  
 **< StringOfPerls>** I was thinking about what you said last night, about being able to transfer pokémon into the system automatically instead of requiring trainers to do it manually.  
 **< StringOfPerls>** I sent an e-mail to the Mossdeep gym and asked them how psychic-type teleportation worked. They said that it might be something we could work into the system as long as a psychic-type was on hand. Maybe you could ask your friend Professor Oak too?  
 **< StringOfPerls>** What do you think?  
 **< StringOfPerls>** ...Bill?  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** sorry! I was looking at the new coding you wrote in. Looks perfect, partner ;)  
 **< StringOfPerls>** Oh, thanks!  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** actually it gives me an idea  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** it shouldn't be too hard to duplicate the box code to make multiple boxes instead of one big one  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** it'd be easier for trainers to organize their pokémon and the pokémon themselves wouldn't be so crowded  
 **< StringOfPerls>** I like that--we could have boxes for flying-types or water-types...  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** but that other new idea you mentioned  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** is that what you've been working on today?  
 **< StringOfPerls>** No, I've been working on something else for the system today. But it's a secret!  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** I hate secrets!!  
 **< StringOfPerls>** I know, but you'll like this one. :)  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** why can't you just tell me? It'll be easier if we work on it together.  
 **< StringOfPerls>** I just want to do it myself. Think of it as a present!  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** oh that reminds me  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** speaking of surprises  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** are you doing anything next week?  
 **< StringOfPerls>** Next week? Nothing much, besides celebrating my birthday with my family.  
 **< StringOfPerls>** Why?  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** well  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** I was hoping you could pick me up from the airport  
 **< StringOfPerls>** What??  
 **< StringOfPerls>** The AIRPORT??  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** :3  
 **< StringOfPerls>** You're kidding! I thought you said you hated traveling! You barely even visit your parents.  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** well  
 **< VulpesMirabilis>** for you, I'd cross the ocean :)

**Author's Note:**

> Interestingly, “Lanette” means “nymph; idol.” Pearls are sacred to Aphrodite; also, marble is usually made up of calcium carbonate, and so are pearls. [Vulpes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulpes) [mirabilis](http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=mirabilis&ending=) is what I imagine Eevee's scientific classification would be.


End file.
